The U.S. public school system is characterized by large funding differences across districts, but what about differences in school spending within districts? Generally, districts have discretion with respect to how they allocate resources to specific schools. In recent research (working paper available here), we evaluate the conditions under which districts under-allocate resources to poor, black, or Hispanic students.
We collect the most recently available school finance data from the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) for the 2011-12 and 2013-14 academic years. These data tell us how much each U.S. public school spent on personnel (teachers and staff) salaries. Average CRDC-reported personnel expenditures are about two-thirds of instructional expenditures, a measure that is commonly used in education finance.
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